One of the best parts of being born in the era of technology is that whenever I don’t know how to do something, I can just look it up on the internet and find 100 ways to do it incorrectly and one way to do it right. Sorting through the methods for home improvement had become the new bane of my existence at the moment. Of course, there are the sites that are more trustworthy to go to for that sort of thing, but there are only so many subjects that a site can cover, and sometimes it was difficult to figure out the correct wording to even know what to search.
Of course, I was leaving a lot of the more difficult projects to the professionals - the flickering lights were going to be looked at by an electrician the next day, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to know how much that was going to run me. Hopefully it was just a minor electrical issue and not that my grandfather had bequeathed me a money pit. I guess if that was the case, I’d just get it up to code as well as I could and then rent as many of the other rooms as possible. Maybe even do some of the AirBnB shit - I’m not really much of one for the cutesy feel of them, but if it helped pay for repairs, I’m sure I could throw up some flowers or something.
Today’s job was to restore the paint in the main entry - I’d been looking at those same gray walls every day when I walked in, and by now, I felt the need to change it up a bit. Plus, I had no idea when the last time my grandfather had painted was. Most of the walls looked fine, but as I was going through to do the spackling, I noted what felt like thousands of different nail holes from pictures that were no longer hung on the wall, plus some obvious signs of wear and tear around the corners. Still looking pretty good for an old house, but needed a bit of a sprucing up.
I dipped my detailed brush into the paint - I’d spent all of yesterday getting the primer done in the room, and while there was a solid part of me that wanted to just say fuck it and leave it for now so I could enjoy the rest of my weekend, there was a stronger part of me that wanted to get it done now so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I ran the bristles of the brush along the edge of the wall where it met the wood of the staircase, changing the color from a dull gray to a light blue. It was definitely a drastic change for the room, but it seemed like the kind of thing that was needed.
From behind me, I heard a small clatter as something fell to the ground on the other side of the room. By this point, I didn’t even look up when I heard a noise. I’m not sure exactly what it was about this house - be it the air conditioning that had been installed long after the house was originally built and therefore had to be installed wherever there was a good spot for it, orr the fact that it was just an old house in general and older houses tend to be unexplainably drafty because of the old building standards - but it seemed like there was always something around this house that was making noise. That first night, the sound of the shutters had spooked me into waking up and wandering around to find what the noise was. After the tenth time doing that sort of thing, though, I realized that that was just how this house was going to be. Older houses tend to act like they were alive, and there was always some sort of movement around them, even when I was the only one there at the time. It’s a strange thing to get used to, but given enough time, anyone can get used to anything.
I dipped my paintbrush in the paint again and heard another crash, slightly larger than before. With a sigh, I set my paintbrush down and looked over there. From what I could tell, there didn’t seem to be anything on the floor. Maybe just the house settling? That was always what my parents had told me when I had heard noises in my own house when I was a young boy. Why this one seemed to be settling a lot right now when it should have been old enough to have been plenty settled already, I have no idea, but I also didn’t even really know what the term meant. I’d have to look it up at some point, I supposed.
I turned back to my work and was just about to pick up the paintbrush when I heard a third crash, even louder this time. I took a step down the ladder and tried to look into the next room as best as I could. “Duke?” I yelled out. “That noise had better not be coming from you, buddy. Stop breaking my things, Dad is trying to work.”
The yellow lab peaked his head sheepishly around the corner of the doorway on the other side of the room, which to me confirmed my suspicions that the noises had come from him. “Whatever you’re getting into, you’d better get out of it!” I scolded him. The dog turned away, obviously looking guilty, and I chuckled at him. It was hard to stay mad at him for too long.
I turned back around just in time to see something hurdling toward my head. I tried taking a step down the ladder, but the object - one of the paint cans that I had stored on the stairs, I think? - was coming too fast. I put my arm over my head to stop some of the blow, but before I could even think much more than “Oh fuck!”, the world went black.
__________
“Well, who do you think this guy is, now?”
“I’ve never seen him before in my life. Usually we don’t get anyone new around these parts, and we didn’t have anyone call ahead. Seth is supposed to show up at some point today, but that sure as hell ain’t Seth unless he’s managed to stop drinking for four seconds.”
“For Seth? You know damn well that day’s never going to come.”
For some reason, my first thought was not to wonder about why there were suddenly a bunch of women in my house, but rather why Duke was being so calm when there were strangers around. In fact, I couldn’t hear him at all over the voices of the women. Maybe he’d been making a fuss and they’d locked him in a room. He hated that - I’d have to go let him out. But when I tried to open my eyes, I found it to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life. I finally managed to crack them open a bit, but all I could see was red.
“Oh, look at that, he’s stirring now! Sir, are you alright? You seem to have had quite a nasty fall, and there’s blood everywhere. In fact, Mabel, could you be a dear and go grab a scrub brush and some water for me? We’ll need to get this cleaned up before it sets into the carpet - blood stains would not be a great look for this place.”
I tried sitting up - my head was pounding, and then I remembered, right, the paint can! I was going to be lucky if I didn’t fracture my skull. I was halfway surprised that I managed to make it out alive. “Who…what..?” I managed to stutter before my head started pounding again. I pressed my palm to my scalp and felt the wet stickiness of blood.
“Now my, he doesn’t seem to be doing too great today, does he? Does your head hurt? Clara, could you go grab the whiskey from the kitchen that Seth left last time he was here. I’m sure he drank most of it, but there should still be enough to sterilize his head, and maybe just enough to give him something to dull the pain. Now, my dear,” the woman said, and I felt a hand on my back, helping me sit. It was tiny, but strong. Then I felt what seemed like a cloth wiping across my face, clearing my eyes of the blood. “I can’t have you dying on me here. Bad for business, you understand. Where did you come from, anyway?”
I reached up and took the cloth from the woman, finally wiping my eyes clear enough so that I could see clearly. I was obviously still in my house, sitting right next to that damned huge staircase that had attempted to kill me not too long ago. But something about the house seemed different. Brighter, maybe? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, other than that some of the furniture was different. Had these women for some reason come in and moved my stuff around? Not that I would mind a group of female roommates, mind you, but it would have been nice to know them a bit first.
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“I was right here, doing some painting, and I think I knocked a paint can off and hit myself in the head,” I said to the woman, finally turning to meet her gaze. She was a thin, short brunette who for some reason was wearing what looked like photobooth gear - a long dark blue skirt with the type of white shirt that I had only seen in old western movies, accompanied with a large hat that even had a feather in it. The woman standing behind her, a taller blonde woman who was holding a cloth handkerchief in her hands, twisting it around in a concerned fashion, was wearing much the same sort of attire, although a black shirt to go with the white shirt. “What are you guys supposed to be?”
“Guys?” the brunette said, with a distinct pinch of annoyance in her voice. “We are the women of this house, and you, sir, are not supposed to be here. Did you even sign in?”
“This is my house, there are no women,” I grumbled. “And I don’t need to sign in, I’m the one who is supposed to be here.”
“Oh dear, he’s so confused!” a third woman said, walking into the room with a mostly empty bottle of what I assumed was whiskey per the previous conversation. She was also wearing a long skirt, violet this time, and a blue shirt with a smaller blue hat to match. “Do you think his head just got jostled when he fell?”
“I think something happened, but I don’t know if he hurt his head when he fell or if he’s always been this dimwitted,” the first lady stated, obviously annoyed. She took the bottle from the third woman and snatched the cloth - what I now saw was another white handkerchief - out of my hands and started to dab it with the whiskey. “Now, are you able to tell us who you are and how you got here, or I swear to God that instead of helping you heal your wounds, I’ll add some new wounds myself.”
“I already told you, a paint can fell on my head. I’m Brian Marshall, and this is my house.”
The woman scowled and started to roughly bat the cloth against my head. The whiskey burned the instant that it touched and I flinched, but stayed put. Short of going to the doctor, I knew that disinfecting the wound was the best step. I would have preferred for it to be done with soap and water, but I’d take what I can get. “You must have hit your head harder than you thought,” she said after a few beats of silence. “I haven’t seen the owner in a few years myself, but you definitely aren’t him. He was much younger than he was, and I’ve seen some weird things happen around here, but I ain’t never seen anyone age backwards.”
“I mean, yeah, I guess it was my grandfather’s house until he died, but I own it now.”
“Hmm. I guess that means we’re going to have to negotiate our business contract with you then, once we get someone here to verify that. I know he wasn’t here a lot, but I’d still expect to see someone in a mourning gown at some point. It seems only proper to give us a heads up, so that we could have switched into our darker clothes. Not that he’d want us mourning for him anyway.”
“And just who are you supposed to be?” I asked irately. I didn’t know a lot of my grandfather’s friends, but I had a feeling that this group of women wasn’t in them, especially if they didn’t see him that often. Why they chose now to show up was beyond me - I supposed that I should be thankful, so that there was someone here to help when I woke up, but right then I was more just annoyed that they had come into my house uninvited. And, I remembered, they had clearly gone and done something with Duke, if he wasn’t already here by my side. “And what did you do with Duke?”
“I’m Edith, of course,” she said, as though that was a completely obvious explanation and she thought I was just too moronic to understand it. “I’m the madam of this lovely group. And as for the Duke, I was under the impression that we had discontinued that horrible tradition almost a century ago. Or, at least, we left them in England.”
She dabbed the cloth into what was apparently a large wound on my head, and the pain seared through my body. I yelped and grabbed the cloth out of her hand. “Sorry, I just, I got it,” I said, when she looked awestruck at my action. “And I don’t mean the Duke of England, I mean my dog. His name’s Duke, and I don’t see him anywhere.”
“You own a dog, and you let him inside? And much less inside this house?”
I shrugged - I know some people still ascribed to having outside dogs, but that just seemed ridiculous to me. “Of course, Duke is a good dog, and I made sure he was house trained when I was still in the apartment.”
“Nevertheless, I’d much prefer him not being in this building.” I shrugged again, not willing to continue the argument at that time - what she wanted and what was going to happen in my house were two very different things, and frankly whether or not dogs should be in the house was not a topic that mattered to me at that exact moment. “In either case, we haven’t seen him - you just appeared here, and as far as I’m aware, there was no dog with you.”
Shit, I thought, he must have gotten scared and hid, then. Might still be scared with the amount of people in the room. “I’ve got to go find him to let him know he’s alright,” I said, starting to push myself up, but Edith pushed me right back down.
“You certainly are not going to go running up and down these halls right now. First of all, you’ll hurt yourself, and second of all, it would be significantly better if we can keep all the blood contained to one area. Jo?” she called out, and yet another girl popped out from the next room. She looked to be about 15 years old, andalso wore the same type of clothes, but with a white shirt and light brown skirt. She was perhaps the most wispy of them all, with very light blonde hair to match. “You probably need a break after your last client, don’t you?” Jo nodded. “Great. This gentleman for some reason thinks his dog is here. Can you please go room to room to see if you can find it, and if so, bring it outside?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said with a little nod and scurried out of the room. While I could hear everyone else, she was so small that I couldn’t even hear her leaving.
“I don’t want Duke going outside when you find him. Just bring him to me and then you can be on your way.”
“You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of who’s going to be on their way,” Edith said with a scoff. “Regardless, fine. If we find your dog, we’ll have him brought to you. Now, we need to get you out of the entryway so we can get the blood cleaned up before anyone else gets here. Not a great look to have a pool of blood on the floor.” She gestured for me to hand her the handkerchief, and I reluctantly did so. With the deftness of someone who had done this many times before, she threw the bloodstained handkerchief over my head and quickly tied it into a knot in the back. She tugged on it lightly to see if it would stay in place - it did - then nodded to herself in appreciation. “That’ll do for now, I suppose. You’re most likely going to get blood in whoever's bedroom you go to, so it’d better be someone who is out of commission today. Can’t have you losing me money, after all, or else we’ll have to charge you as if we’re doctors, and lord knows that’s not cheap.”
“Jo’s not working, you said,” Clara reminded her.
She thought for a second and then shook her head. “She’s not working, but the poor girl needs a break before she comes down with consumption.”
“I can take him,” said the voice that I now recognized was Mabel, returning to the room with a large metal bucket for soapy water and what looked like an antique styled scrub brush. In my mind’s eye, I had pictured her looking much like Clara, but in reality, she was a very short brunette woman with an exaggerated hourglass shape. I couldn’t help my eyes quickly wandering over her exaggerated chest. She saw me do so, and she flashed a quick smile in my direction. “I had a bit of a cough yesterday, I think, and I don’t want to give that to any customers.”
“But you’d rather give it to him?” Clara said, pointing at me.
“Well yeah, he’s not a paying customer. Yet,” she quickly added, winking at me.
“Sure, Mabel, if you want him, you can have him,” Edith said, quickly dismissing her with her hand. She reached for the bucket of water, and Mabel gladly handed it over. “But that won’t get you out of seeing a customer if they come in. We need money to pay the bills after all - just make sure to lay something down so the blood doesn’t get everywhere. And try not to exhaust yourself too much, it’s still a long day.”
“Oh, I won’t, there’s plenty of time left in the day,” Mabel said with a mischievous grin. “Come on, we’ve got to get you upstairs so Edith can clean and no one will see that you cracked your head open.” She held her hand out of me, and I grabbed onto it. If I hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t have used her help to get up, considering she was about half my size, but my head was still hurting, and when I tried to get up, it started spinning a bit. Mabel saw the look on my face and, as soon as I was on my feet, she grabbed the rest of the whiskey bottle from the floor and shoved it into my hands. “Here, drink this, you might need it.”
I was fairly certain that drinking alcohol and any sort of injury was not a great mix, but there was so little of the bottle left, and I was hoping for any sort of painkiller I could get, since it didn’t seem like anyone around here was going to offer me anything. I swigged the rest of the bottle in two large gulps, feeling the burn of the alcohol run down my throat. It had a strange taste - must have been some brand that I’d never tried before, but ultimately it wasn’t that bad of a drink. She took the empty bottle from me and handed it back to Edith, again showing her mischievous grin that made me a bit nervous to go with her. “Thanks ma’am, I think that should help loosen him up a bit.”
“Good luck, just don’t kill him,” Edith said, before kneeling down and starting to tend to the bloodstain on the carpet.